Fluency Tool: JLPT & Shadowing

Fluency Tool is a Japanese app for speaking out loud and writing kanji by hand, with an offline dictionary and JLPT flashcards. Shadow native sentences and get scored on your pronunciation, then practise every kanji taught in Japanese schools, stroke by stroke.

JAPANESE SHADOWING

A JLPT-graded sentence plays in a native voice. Your mic opens by itself when playback ends, and your recording plays back so you hear the gap between your Japanese and the model's. Speech recognition grades the attempt: correct moves you forward, incorrect re-queues the sentence in the same session. A pitch accent visualizer shows where your intonation drifts.

KANJI WRITING PRACTICE WITH STROKE ORDER

Open any kanji and tap Practice writing. Watch plays the strokes in order, Trace numbers where each stroke starts, and Write has you draw from memory. The app checks stroke order, direction and shape, then colours each stroke: green when it is right, amber when the shape is right but the order or direction is wrong, red when the shape is off. You can also write a whole word from its lookup sheet and bookmark it.

ALL SCHOOL KANJI, GRADE 1 TO JUNIOR HIGH

2,979 kanji have stroke data, including all 2,136 Joyo kanji: the 1,026 taught in elementary school (grades 1 to 6) and the 1,110 taught in junior high. Browse them by school grade or by JLPT level.

JAPANESE DICTIONARY THAT WORKS OFFLINE

Search more than 45,000 words by English, romaji, kana or kanji. Each kanji shows its on'yomi and kun'yomi readings, meanings, stroke count, radical, school grade, JLPT level and example words. The dictionary is a one-time download of about 21 MB that starts only when you tap Download, so use Wi-Fi if you can. After that, lookups need no connection.

KANJI TOWER (BETA): LEARN KANJI IN SENTENCES

A 103-floor course through the 1,026 elementary-school kanji. Each floor takes ten kanji: you meet them, trace them inside real example sentences, then write them from memory. Kanji you have learned come back on a spaced-repetition schedule, so floor 40 still brings back what you wrote on floor 3.

JLPT FLASHCARDS WITH SPACED REPETITION

SM-2 scheduling, Anki-compatible. Rate each card Again, Hard, Medium or Easy and the next review interval is set from there. JLPT vocabulary decks for all five levels are preloaded.

JLPT GRAMMAR GUIDE, N5 TO N1

Every JLPT grammar pattern in one reference, with native audio on each example sentence and a quiz attached.

VOCABULARY GAMES

Fever Pitch speed-tap, kanji Hangman, matching and Japanese crosswords, built from the words you are studying.

WHO IT IS FOR

Learners who want to write kanji by hand and not only recognise them, from the first grade-1 kanji to the junior high set.

Intermediate learners (N4-N2) who can read Japanese but hesitate to speak it.

JLPT candidates who want speaking practice, a dictionary and a grammar reference organized by the same levels as the exam.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Can it teach me to write kanji? Yes. Practice writing checks stroke order, direction and shape for every kanji in the dictionary, and the Kanji Tower adds a guided course through the elementary-school set.

Which kanji are included? All 2,136 Joyo kanji, which covers every kanji taught in Japanese elementary and junior high school, plus more than 800 others used in names.

Does the dictionary work offline? Yes, after its one-time download.

Is it useful for JLPT study? Yes, for vocabulary, grammar and kanji organized by exam level. The JLPT has no speaking section, so use the app alongside your exam prep for the speaking ability the test does not measure.

Do I need to know kana first? You should be able to read hiragana and katakana; the app does not teach kana.

PRICING

Everything above is free with no subscription and no trial. A single optional one-time purchase removes ads.

Shadowing audio and speech recognition need an internet connection. Flashcards, games, crosswords, the dictionary and kanji writing work offline once downloaded.